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Don't quit blogging


I am a very avid user of Twitter, as most of you know. But there was a time when I quit Twitter for an extended period of time. One of the reasons why I quit twitter was that Twitter was not archive-able. There are many times when we will want to go back and look at what we were thinking and doing. Unfortunately, with Twitter's limited archival it is next to impossible to understand what we were doing, thinking or pursuing. 

Every platform has its advantages and disadvantages. Twitter has its advantages and blogs have their advantages. I was reminded of this fact in recent days when I decided to hand over admin rights of all my blogs to my brother and  I looked into some of my own writings from years ago. [I have blogs running from 2004.] What strikes me is that so much of what I was thinking has come remarkably correct and I have totally missed on some crucial issues. There are some beautiful vignettes of my own writing that I have enjoyed re-reading. I have had opportunity to revisit those moments of extreme wisdom(y) thoughts that poured out, and which (I don't know why) still make quite a good sense. [They must be right!] Also, knowing how far I have come in terms of knowledge and what I actually set out of achieve is a brutal mirror to look into. I cannot escape it nor hide from the facts that I have wrote myself in terms of my ideologies and the changing stream of processes. Frankly, I just can't hide from my deficiency and (now) visible mistakes or astrays, which is a necessary process in growing as a person and a professional.

The difference with Twitter is STARK.I cannot even reliably go back and see what I wrote last week, let alone go back few years. With the Twitter's stated capacity of limiting the storage to 6 months worth of tweets [May be they have changed this policy now, not sure.] the archival material is gone.  Poooff.. And it just so happens over past year or so, I have tweeted a lot of good material on and off. So have many many others. Unfortunately, all of them are lost?(?) Alexandria again?

Twitter clearly is a medium for the present and present only. It is not for the future reference. Hence it is highly unlikely you will be able to reliably aggregate anything out of twitter streams. Blogs do retain distinct charm and will do so indefinitely IMO. Blogs when they came out it was billed as a web-diary  That's exactly what it is - writing something today, for today and for the future.

Point is simply this: If you are writing something you will want to revisit sometime in future or you want it to be available for others to read at anytime later or in future, then put or replicate those thoughts in a blog as well. 

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